A person typically uses a telephone answering machine or a voice mail service to provide a caller with an opportunity to leave a message should the person be unavailable to take the call. On a busy day, a number of messages may be accumulated and made available for retrieval. As the person goes through the accumulated messages, he or she may simply listen to some of the messages. For other messages, the person may desire to speak directly to the callers in “live calls to the callers”. In other words, the person may desire to make a reply call to one of the callers who left the person a message.
There are different ways in which a person may make a reply call to a caller who left a message such as the method referred to herein as the “urgent-reply”. Pursuant to the urgent-reply method, the reply call is made as soon after listening to the relevant message as desired. For example, a caller may have left an urgent message for the person. As soon as the person gathers the urgency of the message and the relevant call-back information, the person may initiate the reply call. In other words, the person interrupts his or her review of messages to make the “urgent-reply”. Generally, if the person interrupts his or her review of messages, (such as to make an “urgent-reply”), the person misses the rest of his or her messages. To review those missed messages, some systems require the person to call back into the system and to repeat a review of previously reviewed messages.
Systems that require a person to call back into a voice mail system and repeat a review of messages are frustrating to some subscribers because they delay the subscribers' retrieval of missed messages. In these frustrating systems, the person calls back into the system, and if the person has not erased or otherwise taken care of the reviewed messages, the person must listen through or at least skip through the reviewed messages to get to the missed or unread messages. Such a frustrated subscriber much prefers to return to the VMS and pick up where he or she left off by skipping the reviewed messages and proceeding directly to the missed or unread messages.
One way of making a reply call that returns a subscriber to the place in the review of messages where the subscriber left off is referred to herein as a “bounce-back” method, which is generally available only from advanced voice mail systems. Such an advanced voice mail system requires the person to call-in for messages, allows a reply call to be made after a particular message, and then allows the person to return to the voice mail service without the person having to make another call into the system. The bounce-back method may be implemented through the use of a platform such as an intelligent peripheral (IP) that maintains control over the person's call into the system and over the reply call. One manner in which to maintain control is to bridge the person's call into the system with the reply call to the caller who left the message. After the reply call is finished, then the bridge may be tom down, and the person may return to a review of messages or other voice mail functions.
But the manner in which the bounce-back method allows the person to return to the voice mail service without having to make a separate call into the system has drawbacks. Maintaining control over the person's call into the system and the reply call (by making a bridge or otherwise) has the effect of including the platform of the voice mail service as an element in the call path. By remaining an element in the call path, the platform takes up resources of the telecommunications network. In addition, by remaining an element in the call path, the platform may limit, if not eliminate, its own resources to take other calls for the person. Rather than being able to take another call for the person, the platform may be effectively “busy”. Whether the resources that are taken up are those of the telecommunications network, the platform, or the voice mail service, the result of the take-up in resources is an increase in cost in at least operation of the platform and service.
Accordingly, there is a need for a solution that allows a person to interrupt a review of messages in a VMS to take some action, and after the interruption, to return to the same place in the review of messages occupied at the time of the interruption without the person having to make a call into the VMS or otherwise to activate the voice mail service, and without an implementing device of the voice mail service being included as an element in the call path during the interruption.